“Let ’em want,” said Hopkins, encouragingly. “You have nothing to fear so long as you retain the confidence of Don’s father. We’ll go and see him the first thing. Being a magistrate, he will, of course, know just how to go to work to find and arrest those fellows.”
The boy’s confidence in General Gordon was not misplaced, but it is doubtful if that gentleman, with all his shrewdness, could have effected the capture of the robbers as easily as he did, had it not been for the fact that the quick-witted Don obtained a clue for him from a most unexpected quarter.
We left Don and his friends sitting in their cosy room at the shooting-box waiting for supper, which was served in due time. Curtis and Egan were astonished at the quantity and variety of the viands which old Cuff spread before them, and paid the highest possible compliment to his skill as a cook and caterer by eating until they could find room for no more. When he pushed his chair away from the table, after trying in vain to dispose of the last piece of roast duck that Cuff had placed before him, Egan declared that he never could go to bed after such a supper as that, and proposed that they should make another effort to find out where Hopkins was. Don said he thought it would be a good plan; so Egan took down his double-barrel, filled one of his pockets with cartridges and started for the door. Just as he opened it the report of a gun, fired twice in rapid succession, came echoing across the lake. It sounded from the direction of Godfrey Evans’s cabin.
“There he is now,” said Bert.
In order to make sure of it Curtis set up a very fair imitation of a war-whoop (he and the rest of the academy boys had been practicing on it ever since the Indians made the attack on their camp) and before the echoes it awakened had wholly died away, an answering whoop came from the other side of the water.
“It is Hop,” said Don, as he ran into the cabin after his cap. “Shove off the sail-boat, fellows, and pile in.”
In less than a quarter of an hour the sail-boat had been launched and pulled across to the opposite side of the lake. Hopkins was not at the landing to meet them, so the boat’s painter was made fast to a tree, and Don and the rest started toward Godfrey’s cabin. By the aid of the light which streamed through the open door, Don could see that his friend was standing in the yard, that David and his mother were with him, and that all three appeared to be conversing earnestly with a horseman who had just stopped there. When the latter saw Don and his party approaching, he put spurs to his nag and galloped away.
“What did I tell you, Mr. Hopkins?” said David, bitterly. “There are twenty men and more in this settlement who believe just as Mr. Owens does.”
“What’s the trouble here?” inquired Don, “and what does Mr. Owens believe?”
“O, Mr. Don, it’s dreadful,” cried Mrs. Evans, covering her face with her hands and sinking down upon the bench beside the door. “To think that my David should ever be accused of such a crime!”